The 41st edition of the
Dakar Rally —
held entirely in Peru on January 6-17— is coming to an end after participants covered 5,000 km across 10 stages.
Riders and drivers had to tackle kilometers of sand and dunes through one of South America's most challenging terrains.
Nevertheless, only a few of them managed to secure a podium spot in the competition.
Following are the results from the last stage (Pisco-Lima) and the list of winners.
2019 Dakar Winners
Bike
KTM rider
Toby Price has won the last stage of the Dakar 2019 after he beat Jose Cornejo by 2'21 and wins the world's biggest rally-raid for the second time, following his triumph in 2016.
Three years after becoming the first Australian winner of the Dakar, Price has triumphed again, fighting against the increasing pain caused by a scaphoid injury that was not quite healed before the start of the rally.
"It's very crazy to sit here and say that we won the Dakar rally with no stage victories until today. It's really crazy," he said.
"Now I'll just wait and see what damage I've done to my wrist. At the end of the day, the pain and torture have been worth it," he added.
Quad
Nicolas Cavigliasso has won the last special of the rally, his 9th out of 10, as well as his first Dakar on just his second participation.
The 27-year old Argentinean has completely crushed his rivals on the 2019 edition of the rally.
Despite a lead of almost two hours over his compatriot Jeremias Gonzalez Ferioli, Cavigliasso completed the rally at full throttle to pick up a ninth and final victory. Nine out of ten wins have never been achieved before on the Dakar.
"It wasn't easy. I worked hard before this Dakar. I was training all day, two times a day. I trained hard with the quad, hard with the GPS. I'm so happy to finish, so happy with the feeling I had on my quad, for the team, for the people of Argentina, happy for everything," he expressed.
Car
Nasser Al-Attiyah finished the last stage on the 41st Dakar in 12th place 9 minutes behind the day's winner.
"It's fantastic. No mistakes during the entire rally. It was a very, very difficult rally for everybody. The good thing was that from day three we were leading and we built on our time every day until we came to the last day with a big, big lead," the Qatar driver stated.
SxS
Although he finished third in the last special, the Chilean has also won 4 stages and has completed the rally with a lead of just over Gerard Farres and Reinaldo Varela in the general standings.
Truck
Eduard Nikolaev has won his fourth Dakar (and his third in a row) behind the wheel of his Kamaz, 25 minutes ahead of his team-mate Dmitry Sotnikov.
Ton Van Genugten took advantage of the last stage to win his second special on this year's edition of the rally.
(END) RMB/MVB
Published: 1/17/2019